MIB to Implement ACORD-Based XML Interface

Westwood, MA, USA. March 26, 2001.

MIB, the voluntary association
of nearly 600 life insurance companies, has announced it that it has reached
an agreement with ACORD, the insurance industry's non-profit standards
developer, to promote industry adoption of ACORD's XML for Life Insurance
Standards in IT architecture. MIB will implement three new ACORD-approved
TXLife transactions designed for communication between MIB and its member
companies. The approved transactions will initially cover the MIB Checking
Service.

"We're adopting the ACORD Standards to provide our members with the
highest quality of service," said Fred Pritikin, chief marketing officer of
MIB's e-Services Corporation. "Response time will be just a fraction of that
required with our dial-up network and carriers will be able to leverage the
same Internet infrastructure they've implemented for other business processes.
The carriers will be able to communicate with us using standard data formats
and protocols. We expect that this will result in tighter integration of MIB
processes with the carriers' internal business processes."

Pritikin said that MIB was completing a reengineering of all its business
processes. The three ACORD-approved transactions were designed with these
overall improvements in mind.

As it begins the implementation of the XML interface, MIB is seeking
vendors and carriers who are interested in being among the first to adopt the
new technology. MIB plans to work with ACORD to develop additional
transactions for business communications.